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How I found one of the earliest browsers in history
Yesterday, the web celebrated its 25th birthday and to join in, I have a little story. A couple of years ago I found a NeXTcube. I’m not going to say where it is to avoid vandalism (the computer is publicly accessible under some circumstances without much oversight), but this is the story. Sir Tim Berners-Lee…
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Finally happy with the creation of a web site
In the past, I never managed to build a web site and feel happy with the process. Every time I finished building a web site I would have a list of things to never do again. Until now! So, I thought I’d share. First, by web site I mean content, like watuapp.com or screensaver.ninja, I…
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The iPad's lack of Flash is a win-win situation
It seems iPad lack of Flash support is the debate of the moment. On one camp: “You can’t use the web without Flash”, on the other camp: “We don’t need no stinking Flash”. Although I do realize how a technology like Flash is sometimes needed, I’m more on the second camp. The less flash, the…
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The sad truth about testing web applications
There are many ways to test a web application. In the lowest level, we have unit tests; in the highest levels we have HTTP test, those that use the HTTP protocol to talk to running instance of your application (maybe running it on demand, maybe expecting it to be running on a testing server). There…
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Redirecting on load
Of all the bad practices I see on the web this ranks as very bad and I believe it’s not mentioned enough. It’ll easily make it to my personal top 5. I go to a web site, like example.com, and I immediately get redirected to an ugly URL beast, like example.com/news/today?date=2009-06-30&GUID=5584839592719193765662.Wha? Why? First, the site…
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Proper linking ettiquete
This has been mentioned thousands of times on the interwebs, but in case there’s at least one person reading this that didn’t know it, I’m explaining it again. Using hyperlinks in a piece of text doesn’t mean it has to stop being proper, readable English (or any other language). For example, imagine the phrase: It was…
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Pylons or Django?
I am trying to decide whether to use Pylons or Django. Both are frameworks for building Python web applications, but with opposing philosophies. Django tries to be everything. It comes with its own ORM, its own template engine, its own everything. That gives you a nice developing experience because everything fits together and because very…